This week’s Top Ten comes from our friend and frequent contributor FrogMan, who happens to be one of our best manga fans. I asked him for a Manga Top Ten, this is what he hit me with:
FrogMan’s Manga Top Ten!: http://heavyink.com/forum/forums/1/topics/1874
1. Astro Boy Vol. 3- $6.47 (35% off) / Pluto (Vols. 1-8 on sale): What better to have as books of the week than a combination of two revolving around the work of the mangaka who has been called the “Walt Disney of Japan”, Osamu Tezuka. This 3rd volume of Astro Boy is the book that holds the novel long story “The greatest Robot on earth” of which Naoki Urasawa’s series “Pluto” is the retelling. Reading the original book from Tezuka really made me feel like a little boy while the writing and story telling of Urasawa appealed to my more logical adult mind. Also good to know that Urasawa. Great combo!
2. Vagabond (VizBig Editions Vols. 1-8 on sale): Great art, more realistic than often seen in manga, and great story telling in this series. Retelling the life of one of the greatest samurai to have ever lived, Myiamoto Musashi.
3. Old Boy (Vols. 1-8 on sale): Twenty-five-year-old Shinichi Goto was kidnapped one fateful night and locked up in a private jail for unknown reasons. After ten years of solitary confinement, with only a television set for company, he was suddenly released. The story follows his quest to hunt down the identities of his captors and uncover the reason behind his imprisonment. Full of twists and turns and cliffhangers, this series is a great read and only 8 volumes in total.
4. 20th Century Boys (Vols. 1-10 on sale): Some friends start a very secret group back in 1967 and they imagine how the end of the world would happen in 2000. Years go by and lo and behold, there’s a big cataclysm in… 2000 and it happens just as they had predicted it! The series is kinda told in two times, right before and around the big event and then how it unfolds from after 2014. Naoki Urasawa at his best.
5. Naoki Urasawa’s Monster (Vols. 1-18 on sale): Some of Urasawa’s earlier work, published from 1994 to 2001. It’s some good crime writing with psychological twists. Starts with a doctor who has a choice on his hands: operate on a young boy victim of a gun wound or the mayor of Dusseldorf. He decides to operate on the young boy, saving him while the mayor goes on to die. Turns out the boy grows up to be some crazy psycho. Lots of twists and turns here also.
6. Path Of The Assassin (Vols. 1-15 on sale): From the author of another revered manga series “Lone Wolf & Cub”, I was instead attracted to this series because of its historical basis. It is the story of Hattori Hanzo, the master ninja whose duty it was to protect Tokugawa Ieyasu, who would grow up to become shogun and unify Japan. It’s dark and meant for adults but it’s also quite realistic.
7. Blade Of The Immortal (Vols. 1-23 on sale): Manji is a ronin (i.e. masterless samurai) who has been cursed with immortality. He simply cannot be killed, which is not to say it doesn’t hurt him to get cut. He will free himself of said curse only by slaying one thousand evil men. It’s one of the rare manga published in a left to right reading with a cut/paste technique being done by Dark Horse, as opposed to a simple mirror effect which sometimes screws up the order of the text bubbles.
8. Ikigami Ultimate Limit (Vols. 1-6 on sale): In a futuristic Japan, on the first day of first grade, all Japanese students receive an inoculation. A small percentage of these inoculations include a nanocapsule which via radio-control will kill the receiver somewhere between the ages of 18-24. The government believes that the threat of unexpected death will increase prosperity and productivity in its citizens, and indeed this increased prosperity is evident, but at a great cost- innocent lives. Citizens who do not agree with the National prosperity law and who publicly voice their opinions are accused of “thought crime.” Kinda crazy idea but I also found it to be somewhat thought provoking, in this day and age where so many people take everything for granted… The series also follows one of the people who are in charge of delivering the notices, those Ikigami. How would you live if you had to do that for a living…
9. Batman: Death Mask- $6.49 (35% off): Batman: Death Mask was an oddity when it came out. A four part mini series, with issues the size of regular American comics, but written and drawn by a Japanese mangaka, all in black and white and read from right to left. Critics were kinda divided on it but I for one really enjoyed the story. It’s now collected in an affordable digest size.
10. Eyeshield 21 (Vols. 24, 26-32 on sale): This is my guilty pleasure manga and it couldn’t come at a better time with the start of football season. Imagine American high school football as seen and told by a Japanese mangaka. Big eyes, outrageous runs that look like they last for 75 yards, big gestures, it’s all in there, but it’s also a whole lot of fun. They even have little recaps at the end of chapters to explain some of the rules of football. :) Recommend to football fans.
(Note that some of these items are currently unavailable, but I put them on sale anyway in case they should become orderable in the near future. Also, seems that most of Eyeshield 21 is unavailable, so the sale starts with the earliest available volume.)
Great list, FrogMan! Thanks!